Thursday, August 14, 2008

More lovleliness....

It started out pretty good. I was blocked in last night when I went to sleep but when I woke up this morning almost all the spaces around me were vacant.It was no trouble getting out.

It's a good thing I left when I did though because the early rising chicken trucks were returning to their roost. All the reefers that had delivered early in Miami were returning. I expect that in another couple of hours the truckstop would have been packed again.

So I rolled into Miami. Heavy, heavy traffic from Ft. Pierce South. Some places there was heavy construction as well. I say heavy....for south florida it was light. It was moving wasn't it?

Heading into Miami Interstate 95 was ten lanes....five lanes each direction. For a good while there it paralleled the turnpike which was another four lanes. Bunch of people live down there.

I got off the interstate at exit 7 and went east. A block or so past highway 1 was the place. Max's Marine Shop or something like that.

The problem was that there was NO place to get off the street. That ment I had to unload on the street. Easier said than done but we done it.

The locals did NOT make it easy though. We were continually shooing off morons who were parking in the loading zone. Either they couldn't read (English....a real possibility) or they were just Stupid. I vote for stupid.

The guy who bought the crane had lots of problems with it. Before he even got it off the trailer.....it wouldn't start. Dead batteries. He finally got them boosted and it ran for a couple of minutes then died.

Out of fuel.

He got a couple of five gallong cans of diesel....removed and replaced the fuel filters and primed the system....and it started up again....and he almost rolled it coming off the trailer....then almost hit a sign and a fence.

He got it off the trailer and had to go into an alley to get behind his building to his yard in back. His hired help and relatives "shut the street down" (four lane....heavy, heavy traffic, zoned business and bums)...and he got it pointed in the right direction.

He ALMOST got it off the street when the power steering lines broke. GALLONS of power steering fluid everywhere....and he run into his building.

Oh....Welll.

He seemed in pretty good spirits for all that. He signed my B.O.L. and chatted for a bit. It seems he got this thing off of E-bay. Paid more for the freight than for the merchandise.

Amazing.

I left heading toward my next load. Hardly got rolling and it began to rain.

If it goes ten hours in Miami without raining the locals think it's a drought. It wasn't a drought. It rained HARD. Five lanes of traffic on I95 heading north at a creep.

Almost too late I discovered my exit was from the left. I barely had time to change 4 lanes to make it.

Then the customer said the load wouldn't be ready until tomorrow.

Lovely.

So....I declined to stay in Metro Miami overnight. Homeboys and Porch Monkies are more dangerous than Alligators I figured so I headed out into the Everglades across Alligator alley.

Here I are.

Little truckstop in the middle of the swamp at an Indian Reservation. Hell of a deal when I feel safer here than in a city.